Re: Wal-Mart and Wages?

From: Dez Akin (dezakin_at_usa.net)
Date: 07/21/04 

Date: 20 Jul 2004 23:37:35 -0700

Mason A. Clark <masoncNOT@THISix.netcom.comQQQ> wrote in message news:<fs6pf0pajf8id236devsiah2c03eea33kc@4ax.com>...
> >
> >Hi,
> >
> >Mason, countries don't have a strong economy because they pay high wages.
>
> Jim, a circle here? There are notorious countries that have a strong
> economy as measured by the usual GDP but pay low wages. Examples aplenty in
> Africa. The GDP is not equitably distributed -- the god king and his family
> and friends keep most of it.

Thats not exactly a shining example of the social failure of market
based wages. Most of your examples are war torn countries with a
slippery black substance as a prime export, not industrial economies.

> In recent years the U.S. has been drifting in that direction, the god king
> and friends being the growing aristocracy. (come visit here and I'll take
> you on a tour of the palaces).

Erm, sounds like the beginning of a marxist manifesto.
---snip---

> An important equity mechanism is -- or was -- the labor union. Unions
> provided some balance between the power of employers and workers.
> In the U.S. in recent decades unions have become largely ineffective or
> non-existent. ( It would be worth your job if not your life to be a Wal-
> Mart union organizer. )

Instead of attending the very affordable colleges and trade schools?
Historically, unions have done little except ration out jobs for
non-professional labor as cartels, reduce business competitiveness and
foster organized crime.

Far better 'equity mechanisms' would be punishing estate taxes,
simplification of income tax, and comprehensive public education
programs that turns the poor into professionals.

> >
> >I sense a theological belief in salvation through higher wages in your
> >posts.
> >
> God forbid we descend into a French Revolution. We're a long way
> from it now but the trend is in that direction -- if you squint when you
> look at the horizon.

Revolution that you are implying comes when the vast poor majority
have nothing to lose, when people are really suffering. The trend
isn't even pointed in that direction. Everyone in the US is getting
wealthier, and has been for the entirety of the existance of the US
history, and starvation is the last concern of the poor.

You might be able to convince yourself that the rich are getting
richer and the poor aren't getting rich as fast (or even getting
poorer), that the inequity is growing, but that doesn't breed
revolution of the French variety. That comes from more than envy, but
inflicted misery in a state that has no concept of democratic veto and
hereditary privlege enshrined by law. If you honestly believe that the
US is moving _closer_ to such a state of affairs, your living in a
willfully ignorant fantasyland.

It may be pleasant to believe that such naive approaches as 'pay them
more and the economy will grow' apply, and its certainly appropriate
to be skeptical of the market finding optimal solutions in all
scenarios. Markets tend degenerate into monopolies and cartels (see
the rise of Standard Oil, De Beers, and ironically the rise of labor
unions) and occasionally markets allocate resources less than
optimally. But in the absence of an omnicient oracle, markets usually
work better than fiat dictated by a central planner driven by a single
economic theory, or even worse, naive idealism.

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